Jerry Wexler Biography

Jerry Wexler (record executive and producer; born January 10, 1917, died August 15, 2008)

Before the advent of rock and roll, the term producer wasn’t even part of the recording-industry vocabulary. “No one really knew how to make a record when I started,” Jerry Wexler has said. “You simply went into the studio, turned on the mike and said play.” However, with the proliferation of independent record labels in the 1950s came a new breed of hands-on music-industry entrepreneurs. Among the most influential and important of these was Wexler at Atlantic Records.

His entree into the music business came at Billboard magazine, where he worked as a reporter and helped change the name of the black-music charts from “Race Records” to “Rhythm & Blues.” He joined Atlantic founders Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun in 1953 and began producing the company’s major rhythm & blues artists at all-night recording sessions that, in hindsight, were historic in their scope and impact on popular music. Wexler’s efforts at Atlantic helped bring black music to the masses - and in so doing built a significant and lasting bridge between the races.